My Dear Child of the Enemy

In Changchun, in the northeastern reaches of the P.R.C., a dwindling number of senior citizens live in the municipally run apartment building known as the China-Japan Amity House. The half-dozen seniors remaining are all foster parents of the Japanese war orphans left in Manchuria after the Soviet invasion in 1945. Before the war, over a million Japanese had been living in Manchuria. With defeat came deaths, family break-ups, and abandoned children. Chinese foster parents then faced persecution for aiding “children of the enemy”. In the 1980s, under a bilaterally coordinated Sino-Japanese repatriation plan, almost all the war orphans chose permanent residence in Japan. Now, parents and children live apart. But having returned to what should be their “beloved homeland” many of the war orphans find both their Japanese language skills, and Japanese governmental assistance, insuf ficient to secure employment. Sixty-five percent live on welfare. And though they want to visit their foster parents back in China, which would entail a temporary suspension of their public assistance, making such visits difficult to manage financially. This documentary introduces cameras into the China-Japan Amity House, and into the lives of some of the war orphans. From these vantage points, we observe how parents and children, trapped between the flawed plans of both countries, struggle to preserve parental ties that transcend considerations of blood.